Category — Containers

Campanulas were the first successful shade flower I ever grew. At that point, I was pretty dim on sun and shade requirements of plants; I just started some Campanula medium seeds, and put the plants out under the high shade of a live oak, where there was some room for them. I thought they’d look pretty there. (As far as I can tell, these are the campanulas whose common name is Cups and Saucers–but there seem to be different schools of thought on this. If anyone can clear it up, please do.)

Unlike most of my garden dreams, this one actually came true. The plants grew into 5-foot spires that flowered pink and violet for many weeks, against a background of orange sunsets glinting off the hard live oak leaves. They also didn’t need inordinate amounts of water. I was sold.

These days, I grow all my campanulas in containers, where they seem quite happy. The single Canterbury Bells in bud in the photo at the top of the page are also Campanula medium, but a different variety. They are supposed to be biennial, like the double Cups and Saucers, but for me many of them act as perennials. Either that or they are very discreetly reseeding and reproducing themselves in the exact same spots.

Sometimes they sport to a hose-in-hose double that’s a variant of Cups and Saucers,

sometimes they sport to a variant that’s closer to the Cups and Saucers form, but doesn’t quite make it.

I don’t have picture of what I think of as real Cups and Saucers for two reasons: the seeds seem to be very hard to find in recent years, and they take two years to flower. Though I love them, this seems to be enough of a barrier that I don’t have them in my garden. If I could find plants, I’d buy them, but alas, they are out of fashion, and therefore unavailable.

C. persicifolia alba to the left; C. medium ‘Canterbury Bells’ in an unadorned single form to the right.

One campanula I love which doesn’t flower well in the shade is Campanula persicifolia alba. I guess that means I should move them out of the shade, where they occasionally vouchsafe a small spire, or a single bloom or two on short stems.  I had a hard time getting them to grow from seed, but a friend gave me a ragged chunk of plants she’d been thinning, and they’ve been growing and spreading ever since. C. persicifolia alba (and the purple C. persicifolia) are rampant spreaders, so use caution. But they are also beautiful early-summer flowers (with occasional repeats) that last for weeks in the vase.

Campanula pyramidalis alba has flowers very similar to C. persicifolia alba, but it is a much taller and grander plant, going to four feet in semishade for me. It also blooms much later, often into late fall in our area (this photo was taken in November). Like the other campanulas in this post, it’s conservative on water, though it does need some. It is supposed to be perennial, but mine flowered gloriously one year, and was seen no more. I got my seeds from JL Hudson, where S. Calkins calls it, “Stunning in arrangements.” I must start more, because C. pyramidalis alba is one of the most beautiful and easy-care plants I know.

More on campanulas:

There are so many kinds of campanulas, it would take an expert to know them all. Northern Shade seems close to an expert to me.

JL Hudson has many kinds of campanula seeds, some of them unusual species; pithy descriptions of each.

I started out full of myself. And multiple enthusiasms. This would be the most unusual, fresh version of the Three Sisters the world had ever seen. And it was all going into my prize bronze-brown Vietnamese pot, the big one that I’d splurged on at the discount store (it was only a few dollars more than a plastic one the same size, I told myself). I had vague, secret-from-myself dreams of how I’d win the Fine Gardening container contest, with becoming modesty of course.

Then came the reality.

Those  yin-yang beans I bought to twine up the cornstalks? Well, as it happens, they were bush beans. They weren’t going to twine anywhere. And they didn’t seem to like the circumstances I’d put them in, either; I harvested two pods with two beans in them and that was it.  The leaves had a ratty white-spotted look, too, that I think was due to nitrogen deficiency. I did get enough beans to replace the ones I planted, though the ones I harvested were kind of scrawny.

OK, then there were the violetto trionfo beans that actually do climb. (I planted three of them, and three of the yin-yang beans. Six stalks of corn.) I’ve got at least one of them running up the cornstalk now. But they’re just blooming, and the way those corn cobs feel, the corn’s going to be long dead before the beans get ready.

And then there’s the corn itself. A Japanese exotic corn, striped pink, cream, and white. How cool is that? And it’s actually very pretty-but not nearly as healthy (or colorful) as I’d envisioned. I do admit to getting a laugh out of pruning corn, which has got to be the most Garden Society thing I’ve ever done.  The leaves would go dead, and the corn would look funky, so I’d cut off the dead ones. Pruning corn.

Even though it wasn’t what I expected, I have enjoyed seeing the corn evolve, from its first pale stripes to the dark burgundy color that’s spreading ever further along the stalk. And even though it’s not as tall and bushy and strong as I would have liked, I did get one small ear of wine-red corn on each stalk.

The cucuzzi climbed rampantly out of all the other pots I put it in-but it made a few pale leaves and petered out in this one. The Waltham butternut squash  I also put in there is just putting out its first blossom now. And the surprise Brown Sugar canna (deep brown foliage, pink flower, reputedly) I planted late? It did show a tentative green point a month or so ago. And then sank back into the earth.
I think this trio, or quintet, (or sextet, if you count the canna), needed a lot more water than they got in that pot. I put in a reservoir insert, so they did get some bottom watering. And I put in some water-conserving polymers into the soil. But  I think that reservoir just wasn’t big enough for such heavy drinkers. Especially in a ceramic pot that allows water to evaporate. It’s  a glazed ceramic pot, which is a lot less porous than unglazed. But still.

I think they all needed a lot more food than they got, too. Oh, I did use a heavy-on-compost mix for soil, and put in amendments, the way I do with all of my container plants. And I foliar fed them, the way I do my whole garden. But corn, beans, and squash are notoriously nitrogen-hungry. They are heavy feeders and drinkers, and I treated them like anorexics.

Recently, I also read that the Three Sisters idea was about handy harvest, as well as space saving. The corn would have been field corn-the kind you gather when it’s ripened hard, to feed to livestock. (William Alexander suggests a modern version: use popcorn.) The squash would have been winter squash or pumpkins–not harvested until their shells were hard. Late, like the corn. And the beans would have been dry beans, not ones you’d pick off the vine to eat fresh. Dried beans that get harvested when the pods dry.

I could look at this season’s formerly-known-as-star container and be disappointed. But you know what? I’ve enjoyed the little purple curling edges of the corn leaves, and I’m enjoying the purple bean flowers and vines spiraling around the almost-dead corn, and I enjoyed the magic of opening up my two little pathetic yin-yang pods and finding replicas of the little seeds I planted.
I even enjoyed pruning corn.

Reference:

The $64 Tomato, William Alexander, Algonquin Press, 2006

Places to get seeds:

yin-yang beans: Park’s
violetto trionfo beans (I  notice they are not in the current catalogue. They’d been sitting for some years): Pinetree Gardens
Japanese ornamental corn: JL Hudson
cucuzzi squash: JL Hudson
Waltham butternut: Pinetree Gardens

The Holihock disdains the common size
Of Herbs, and like a tree do’s proudly rise,
Proud she appears, but try her, and you’ll find
No plant more mild, or friendly to mankind
She gently all obstructions doth unbind.

Abraham Cowley

Every part of a hollyhock is worth looking at, from the first sprouting leaves to their full abundance; from the rising stalk to the buds; from the opened flower to the fat, satisfyingly seed-packed pod.

This single, pale-pink hollyhock is one of the simplest I grow. Maybe because of that, I never get tired of it, though (as is the sad way of human beings) I tend to take it for granted just because it is so trouble-free and reliable.

But the pale, illuminated opening buds are as fine a flower as you’ll find anywhere.

I start my hollyhocks in the fall, since they seem to take awhile to germinate. (This is true of most perennials; probably a survival mechanism. Annuals, which have to grow from seed every year, seem to be in more of a hurry to sprout.)

In my area, starting seeds in fall means they are more likely to stay moist all the time and not fry. It’s just easier than hovering over the seeds with a watering can, and, to be honest, it’s a lot easier than slapping myself on the brow because I’ve just shriveled yet another seedling from forgetting to water for one day.

By starting in the fall, I get a full-sized plant the next blooming season. I’m not sure how this would pan out in colder areas (I’m in zone 8, which means we get freezes, but only rarely a hard frost.) Hollyhocks are hardy plants, so it seems to me that it could work to plant seed in late summer or early fall, even in cold areas. As Gerard said hundreds of years ago, ” The second yeere after they are sowne they bring forth their floures…” Fall sowing means that the second year comes more quickly.

If you start a hollyhock in spring, it may not be fully ready to bloom until late that season. You may even have to wait until the following year. But it will be worth it!

Whenever I see a flower with a bee in it now, I think of Barbee’s blog–her avatar is a pink mallow-looking flower (Zebrina?) with a large bee right in the middle of it. A gardening friend of mine says that she finds bees passed out in her hollyhocks, drunk with nectar. This one was only visiting, and if it passed out, it did it discreetly.

Hollyhocks also attract butterflies and hummingbirds, so they’re good for all of these flying pollinating creatures whose habitats humans are eroding. So hollyhocks can be a tiny way to help some of the mess we’ve made, and give ourselves pleasure at the same time. If we could think of more things like that, the world would be a better place.

One year, this single pink hollyhock grew something like nine feet tall, in a container. (Since it was in a pot, it’s hard to say exactly, but it towered over a one-story building by at least a foot.) While I thought that was pretty impressive, it was apparently tiny in comparison to some. The 1982 Guiness Book of World Records is said to boast of a 24-foot, 3-inch hollyhock grown in 1961 by W.P. Walshe of Eastbourne, Sussex, England. There’s no photo, though.

Though it might not have reached the heights of some, my single pink hollyhock does tend to grow taller than the others; it’s always one of the most enthusiastic of my hollyhocks, and the one that keeps on blooming at the end of its stalk, even when the others are long gone.

All my hollyhocks are container-planted (though I give them some pretty serious containers), and they don’t get special treatment. I foliar feed them once every week or two, and give them dry fertilizer a few times a year. They grow tall and strong, and if they get enough sun, they bloom. Hollyhocks are so tough that they can grow under black walnut trees. Black walnuts give off juglone, a toxic substance which usually kills off the other plants in its root range. Deer don’t seem to like hollyhocks, either. That makes them stellar plants for tough situations.

Hollyhock rust (caused by a fungus, Puccinia malvacearum) seems to come on just after the blooms really get going. I’m not sure of the reason for this, and I’m uninclined to hunt around for one. Because hollyhock rust has never seemed to hurt any of my plants. True, it looks less than glorious. But so do the rest of us, at times.

Some gardeners take off the first two leaves of older plants when they return in spring; the theory is that this reduces the number of fungus spores that have overwintered in the plant. Others spray with lime sulfur to keep it from spreading. But, apparently, there is no cure for the disease.

While I like a prosperous-looking garden as well as the next one, I just can’t get worked up over imperfections that aren’t actually harmful to the plants. Death happens. It’s a part of nature. A garden should reflect that. That’s my feeling, anyway, and I understand that that’s also a principle of Japanese gardening. Most of the Japanese gardens I’ve seen are a lot neater than mine, though.

Meanwhile, I take my usual childish pleasure in the round fat seedpods, which don’t remind me of cheeses, but do seem to hearken back to some ancient memory, some old shape of the mind, having to do with fullness, satisfaction, and the entrance into another world.

References:

Thompson & Morgan

Wuv’n Acres

The dramatic Alcea rosea nigra is only one face of the hollyhock.

Lately, I’ve been pulled in by the incredible variety of hollyhock shapes and colors Even the leaves can vary, depending on the type of hollyhock. This six-part series will take a close look at some of the hollyhocks I know personally, as well as hollyhock background, uses, symbolism, and culture.

Hollyhocks are often discussed—and even sold–en masse, with varieties and colors and cultivars lumped together. They deserve better. They are beautiful, of ancient lineage, medicinal, and at least somewhat edible. And their usefulness goes even further: they’ve been pressed into service for making and dyeing cloth, not to mention screening outhouses.

If you check sources, you will find many authoritative opinions on where hollyhocks come from. Unfortunately, a lot of these opinions will be different. Syria, Palestine, the Middle East in general, India, southern Europe, and China are some of the contestants. And the winner is…China, because it is mentioned by a more than one reliable source, and details about its uses and cultivation in China are given. Because Maureen Gilmer adds that there are pictures of hollyhocks in 9th century Chinese art—documentary evidence. And because China makes sense as a starting place for a plant which seems to have followed the Silk Road.

If anyone knows of an authoritative source or three which mention the same country of origin for hollyhocks, I’d like to hear about it. Wherever they actually originate from, hollyhocks have made themselves at home in many parts of the world. And they’ve been helped by some of the most prolific seed-distributers: people who like them, and carry them long distances on the strength of it.

If you have sun, you can easily bring hollyhocks into your own part of the world. (You can sometimes persuade them to bloom in semi-shade, but it’s a chancy thing.) Once established, they settle in and re-seed themselves in the pleasantest way, making comfortable broad-leaved clumps that spread and grace a wall without ever invading. And they give an incredible show for very little care.

Hollyhocks also adapt beautifully to containers, as long as the containers are deep enough. But you must either have really serious supports (hollyhocks can go to six feet high, and they are not wispy plants), or something for them to lean on—a wall, a tree, shrubby plants.

In a container, hollyhocks are a great green groundcover for summer bulbs such as lilies, glads, and irises. They can also intermingle with cool-loving plants such as pansies and campanulas. When the heat comes on, the hollyhock will shade them and hopefully preserve them. When the weather cools, you can judiciously pluck a big hollyhock leaf or two so the pansies (and so on) can grow through for a fall and/or early-spring show.

If it freezes in your area, the hollyhock greens will die back—but they come back very early. Supposedly an annual, in my area, hollyhocks tend to be short-lived perennials, dying back each fall and springing up when the weather shows the slightest signs of warming the following year. Winters in my area are mild, by which I mean: it freezes, but not all the time, and we rarely have a hard freeze. In colder winters, some hollyhocks may be truly annual.

A less-known variety of hollyhock, Alcea ficifolia, is much more inclined to be perennial. This variety has been crossed with A. rosea types, and that may be why some strains of hollyhocks are more perennial than others. I’ll write more about Alcea ficifolia later in this series—but for now, I’m going to continue with the glories of the black hollyhock.

Later stage: after the pollination is over

Some might say that “black hollyhock” isn’t the right name for this flower. A gardening friend of mine remarked that these hollyhocks were eggplant-colored—which is exactly right. One cultivar name I’ve heard for this variety (or something very like it) is ‘Black Watchman’; I suppose ‘Eggplant’ would be a little less glamorous. Me, I just bought the seeds as Alcea rosea nigra. In a way, this is the silliest name of all: it parses out like this: Alcea– from a Latin word meaning “wholesome” or “healing”. Rosea – red (actually red-purple, the color of ancient roses). Nigra – black. Altogether: Healing red-purple plant that’s black.

My 1947 Sunset Flower Garden Book says that if you cut back the stems, you can get a second flowering in late summer and early fall. But I need some of the seed to ripen, so I can pass it around to friends (one of the best ways to leave a nice legacy and incidentally make sure you have a supply yourself, should your own plants give up the ghost). So some of my flower stalks, at least, are not going to be cut back until the seed ripens.

Ripe seedpods are one of the pleasures of hollyhocks, in their own quiet way as pleasing as the flowers themselves. I’m certainly not the first to notice this: Gerard (late 1500s) and Crispin de Pass (1614) said that the seed-pod was ‘like in shape unto small cheeses….from which this plant is called Keeskens cruyt by the Dutch.’

Next post: burgundy hollyhocks. And how they got into European and British gardens.

References:

Mrs. C. F. Leyel, Officier de l’Academie Francaise, Fellow of the Royal Institute, Elixirs of Life, first pub. 1948 Faber and Faber; pb reprint 1987

J.L Hudson Rare Seed Supplement #2008-A

Dictionary.com, Random House and American Heritage dictionaries.

Maureen Gilmer, “Hollyhocks, an American Garden Staple”

Sunset Flower Garden Book, Lane Publishing Company, 1947

Okay. Look at this flower. Then tell me how anyone can prefer the fat, bloated-petal daylilies that are in vogue now.

I know this won’t make me popular with daylily breeders. I’ve even looked at picures of the new daylily types in catalogues and on blogs (okay, drat. I found a daylily blog with gorgeous pictures through Blotanical, but now I’m unable to perform the search that will lead me (and you) to it again. So here’s a place that specializes in daylilies, with well over 700 varieties–enough to prove my point) and websites. But then I take a look at the older types like Hyperion, with their graceful, wing-like shapes. And then I just don’t want to buy the newer types. No matter how pretty the colors, or how fetching the closeups. When you back off and look at newer daylilies as a whole, they just aren’t as graceful as the old types.

The closeups on Hyperion are no slouch, either. And you get to inhale. Because another thing a lot of modern plants are missing (and daylilies are no exception) is fragrance. Hyperion has a faint, freshly sweet scent, an added bonus.

I think black-and-white does a better job than color when it comes to showing form and texture.

But color’s fun to look at, too.

When a plant has been in gardens for over eighty years, you know that it has some lasting qualities that endear it to gardeners. Heirloom plants have passed the tests of time. Newer, bolder, brighter plants pass them by–and yet still people keep the old standards in their gardens.

Besides form and scent, and the power of memory, a lot of the reason for growing heirlooms is practical: heirloom garden plants tend to have a lot of that flexibility that gardeners such as myself find so appealing. When neglected, they spring back. They don’t require a lot of care. And they stand up to a number of different conditions. In this case, as you can see, this Hyperion doesn’t even have full sun; it’s growing in amongst the cedars, with a few hours of full sun a day. (The canna behind it also blooms in the same situation, but not very enthusiastically.)

As a friend of mine once pointed out, daylilies make fine cutting flowers: each bloom lasts only a day, but you get several buds on the stem, and they can open in the vase just as well as on the plant. Daylilies are hardy enough to naturalize well, but they also do well in containers, where I’ve got mine. I bottom-water it by putting the big pot in a big plastic bulb pan, then filling the pan (now a saucer for the pot) with water. This gives the daylilies all they want to drink. Daylilies seem to prefer wet spots when they naturalize, but again, the older types are forgiving: they may not thrive if you have to let them dry out, but they will come back.

Daylilies are also edible, though I’ve only tried Hemerocallis fulva, which used to grow on the roadsides when I lived in New Jersey. As I recall, they were quite bland; I didn’t batter and fry them, as some recommend, because once you batter and fry something, you’re basically tasting oil and batter, with a touch of the texture of whatever’s in there. Euell Gibbons says that daylily buds and just-opened flowers are popular in some parts of Asia as a stir-fry vegetable and have a great taste. Maybe I picked them at the wrong time or cooked them the wrong way, but my memory of daylily flowers is that they are kind of soft and slimy. While they might be nice as a novelty or helpful as a food when nothing else is available, they’re not something I’d seek out. I prefer them on the plant or in the vase. Daylily tubers are also edible, but I’ve never tried eating them. Their tubers (not bulbs) are small, so you need a big stand of them to try.

The tubers (not bulbs) are a clue to clearing up a vexed subject: daylilies aren’t lilies, they are their own thing. Some misguided catalogues actually include daylilies in the lily section; I consider this a sign of a company to avoid. Good catalogues give a cross reference from lily to daylily, so we can learn what’s what and avoid the problems that might come up if we tried treating daylilies like lilies. Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus (formerly flava) is another older daylily I’d like to try (it’s been in cultivation since the 1600s). Like Hyperion, it is also lemon yellow-in fact, another name for it is Lemon Lily. (Very likely, Hyperion has Lemon Lily blood in it.) It’s also fragrant, gracefully narrow-petalled, and requires little care. Until I see a modern daylily that lives up to these standards, that will complete my daylily collection.

If you feel indignant about my spurning of newer daylily varieties, please feel free to leave an opinion. Preferably with some reference to pictures, so we can all judge for ourselves.

References:

Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Healthful Herbs, David McKay Company, Inc., 1966 (and reprinted many, many times since then)

McClure and Zimmerman catalogue, spring 2008

Old House Gardens catalogue, spring 2008-9